> Seems like a topic where everyone has made up their mind and will only accept data if it aligns with their world view.
I'm kind of between both camps. I actually like in-office work, but the combination of 1) facilities pursuing bad office plans (open-offices, hot desking) and 2) the rise of remote work and distributed teams makes RTO pretty unappealing.
Co-located in-office work also makes me feel a lot more secure. It's much harder to form social bonds remotely, which makes you much more isolated and replaceable. Remote work pretty ruthlessly cuts away all relationships except direct working relationships, and even makes those much flatter and less warm. It's easier for a higher up to fire someone they don't know, and fewer of your peers will care or even notice if you leave.
Also, here's your daily reminder that an offshore job is a remote job, so once you're no longer in an office you've removed a big speed bump for replacing you.
Every time I go into the office (very rarely) I understand the benefits of going in. Having 1:1s in person is night and day different than having it over video. Lunch discussions really help with sending subtle messages which you might not do in more structured meetings. Moving around is probably also healthier for me than staying still constantly in my home office. That said my team is distributed across 5 offices and it would be unfair to some of them if I went in, so staying home levels the playing field. I'm also far more productive in many ways (no commute, no running between meeting rooms, ability to multitask during meetings, etc).
If my entire immediate team was in a single location I don't think I could get away with not going in despite the tradeoffs.
I think there is an unspoken belief amongst most here that they are the indispensable contributors to their organization (and there are many genuinely talented people here no doubt), and that they can never be replaced. Of course many of our mentors have told us an undeniable truth; that the world's cemeteries are full of indispensable people.
You'll often see an argument that timezones are important, which is fair, but I'll note that there are many countries south of the US with cheaper labor and some quite smart people (my experience from working with them).
Language/culture is another argument and another fair point, but I think at some point cost differences make up for it. And the US seems uniquely good at exporting language and culture anyway.
At the end of the day, I like working with a small team of smart and dedicated people. We work in a quite hybrid fashion that seems to work for us. I don't believe we've ever all met at once in the time I've worked here, but while I and a few others come in almost every day, some come in to work a bit more closely as needed. I think this sort of individuation of working circumstances is something that a large company is just going to struggle with; it's not really something that can be articulated in a policy that all parties will consider fair, but it's just sort of the way things have organically fallen here even before the pandemic, but especially after it.
While this is undoubtably true being in office won’t save you if you are in office in the US. I am full remote and for what my company pays me they could easily get 10 Indian engineers. If time zones are an issue then they could easily get 2-4 top tier Mexican developers instead. Go to Colombia and we are back to being able to afford 8-10 again.
The cost difference is large enough that if a company can effectively off shore then they will.
> The cost difference is large enough that if a company can effectively off shore then they will.
My point was embracing/demanding remote work removes one more barrier to offshoring (or more offshoring), not that working in-office will somehow totally protect you from layoffs or offshoring. Basically, being remote puts you in weaker position in many respects, and people should be clear-eyed about that.
It's a fairy tale to think of companies and ruthlessly rational and efficient. A lot of decisions are really driven by some descision-maker's personal preferences and personal convenience.
As someone who has been effectively remote for a long time, I actually sort of agree with you.
To the degree that an office is very hybrid, remote people will often be somewhat marginalized while the environment for in-person will naturally use things like hot desking and a lot of people won't just be there. Some of this can probably be mitigated (and large companies always had people in a lot of different locations).
> Some of this can probably be mitigated (and large companies always had people in a lot of different locations).
They always have, but I think the key mistake is smearing a single team across different locations. Once you do that, or start doing that habitually, you've completely undermined whatever benefits you think your organization will get from RTO.
IMHO, if you really want to RTO, you need to co-locate all team members (and reorganize teams to make that happen), and ideally co-locate closely collaborating teams.
I'm kind of between both camps. I actually like in-office work, but the combination of 1) facilities pursuing bad office plans (open-offices, hot desking) and 2) the rise of remote work and distributed teams makes RTO pretty unappealing.
Co-located in-office work also makes me feel a lot more secure. It's much harder to form social bonds remotely, which makes you much more isolated and replaceable. Remote work pretty ruthlessly cuts away all relationships except direct working relationships, and even makes those much flatter and less warm. It's easier for a higher up to fire someone they don't know, and fewer of your peers will care or even notice if you leave.
Also, here's your daily reminder that an offshore job is a remote job, so once you're no longer in an office you've removed a big speed bump for replacing you.